Quotes by Joseph Barbera

• Making cartoons means very hard work at every step of the way, but creating a successful cartoon character is the hardest work of all.
• One of the most attractive things about writing your autobiography is that you're not dead.
• Not once in six years did I make it to the office by 9 on the dot.
• My marriage had been impulsive. That marriage should have been short-lived instead of the 23 years it spanned.
• Parents look at me like I'm somebody pretty important, and say, We were raised on your characters, and now we're enjoying them all over again with our children.
• My biggest kick comes from the individual fans I run into. Middle-aged men ask me when we're going to do more Johnny Quest cartoons.
• You keep pitching. Most of the pitches run wild. A few are caught.
• Los Angeles was an impression of failure, of disappointment, of despair, and of oddly makeshift lives. This is California? I thought.
• My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion.
• Publicity gets more than a little tiring. You want it, you need it, you crave it, and you're scared as hell when it stops.
• Ted Turner sailed into the meeting, and I mean sailed. He holds himself as if he were at the helm of his sailboat, in the process of winning the race.
• There is no law that says a man who earned a hundred million dollars in his first half-dozen years on the job has to be a decent human being, but Mike Eisner is that and more.
• What about Mickey Mouse? Disney tried very hard to make him a star. But Mickey Mouse is more of a symbol than a real character.
• Creating fantasy is a very personal thing, but you can't take the process too personally.
• What the real world of 1941 needed most was the release and relief provided by laughter.
• When animators weren't sleeping, they were drinking.
• While I have never been a regular churchgoer, I'm anything but immune to the power and the majesty of the religious experience.
• In those days, boxing was very glamorous and romantic. You listened to fights on the radio, and a good announcer made it seem like a contest between gladiators.
• That's what keeps me going: dreaming, inventing, then hoping and dreaming some more in order to keep dreaming.
• High-level, big-deal publicity has a way of getting old for me, but what never fails to thrill me is when I make personal appearances.
• I was convinced there as only one actor to play Templeton the Rat, and that was Tony Randall.
• Except for me, no one in my family could draw.
• After I had done a handful of cartoons I was satisfied with, I started submitting them to the magazines.
• Among the great glories of the MGM lot were the vast outdoor sets that had been constructed over the years.
• Bill Hanna and I owe an awful lot to television, but we both got our start and built the first phase of our partnership in the movies.
• Despite the rejection, and in violation of all the rules, I came back year after year.
• Friends don't necessarily made good business or creative partners.
• I cannot say who, precisely, came up with the idea of a Stone Age family.
• I hope we don't get to the point where we have to have the cat stop chasing the mouse to teach him glassblowing and basket weaving.
• I was 82 years old before Who's Who thought I was enough of a big shot to do a piece on me.
• Faced with the choice of enduring a bad toothache or going to the dentist, we generally tried to ride out the bad tooth.
• I learned long ago to accept the fact that not everything I create will see the light of day.
• I don't know anyone who enjoys going to the hospital. To help remedy this, I got an idea to create what a Laugh Room in the pediatric ward of hospitals.
• I have spent a lot of years on the outside looking in.
• I first pitched the idea of doing a series of cartoons based on Bible stories. They didn't much like it.
• I don't know that I spent any more time alone than any other kid, but being by myself never bothered me.
• I never got tired of Tom and Jerry, but I did have a dream of doing more with my life than making cartoons.